Nearly 48, and still trying to figure out what to do with life

Or maybe not, but still … The truth is that for months now I’ve felt rather adrift. I even wrote about it right here.

It started with a dollop of empty nest syndrome, then my doggy dying, and then that got all jumbled together with multiple rejections of my book – a novel which was my work, hope and wishes and, yes, my pension plan for these last few years.

(Perhaps I’ll tell you more about those merry rejections another time.)

And now I’m trying to find a meaningful way forward. I’m trying to discover my purpose, although I’m on nothing as grandiose as a world-changing mission to end poverty or hunger or the rise of the reactionary strongman.

Instead, I’m trying to find my small, private purpose, the thing I’m sure I used to know.

I’m trying to untangle my passion from the knotted fishing lines and seaweed on my shore, to hold it up shiny above the flotsam and jetsam, to feel the thud of familiarity, of recognition, the heartbeat that goes “aha, there you are”.

I read somewhere the thing to do is to play a little game with oneself; to ask a question: if you had to leave your home every single day, where would you go and what would you do?

Try it yourself.

I asked a friend. She’d go to the cinema and watch movies all day. She’s a wannabe scriptwriter so it makes perfect sense, her passion writ large on the imaginary silver screen.

Next I questioned Himself. He’d go to a coffee shop and read endlessly, consuming book after book like food for his soul. That made perfect sense, too, given that he’s a novelist.

Finally, I asked myself. Seems I’d sit beside the ocean and watch the waves, or I’d lie on my back and look at the sky, drinking it in until I was drunk on all that was huge and blue and endless; until I was one with it; until my soul was still.

“Wow, you’re an aesthete,” said Himself, which was certainly kinder than my own reaction, that I’m lazy.

Still, time trips onwards oblivious.

I’m 48 tomorrow. I really do need to work out what I’m going to be when I grow up.

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